Plumbum.color

[henryiii]

This is the plumbum.colors module I've been working on, designed to make adding colors easy and safe. I've prepared a post about it here, this post has been updated, and there is extensive documentation in the addition. As a quick example:

from plumbum import colors
print("This is red" << colors.red + "This is not red")
with (colors.blue+colors.bold):
    print("Styles can be combined, and are context managers.")

You can access the ANSI 16 basic colors, 256 colors (with names), and full 24 bit color - and can convert between them (This is the only library I know of that can do that). You can easily subclass Style to create more representations (HTMLStyle is included to make documentation easier to write). Styles are smart and know how to combine to create the most effective ANSI sequence. Styles correctly handle being turned off, and don't turn on for non-posix tty systems (can be forced, though). Basic colors can be used on Windows with a tool (like colorama) to convert ANSI codes. (See examples).

Docs (with list of color names), API docs, tests, examples included.

Closes #128

[henryiii]

If it was a stand-alone package, it couldn't a.) be integrated with plumbum.cli, and b.) it would run in to the same problem as colorama and all other color packages: they have to be installed to be used, and they are generally "non-essential", and would require a dependency that you would have to check for. If a script depends on plumbum, now it has guaranteed easy access to color.

The bracket syntax works just fine, try it. :) (red + bold)["red and bold"]

* or << is easier when actually writing code IMO, because you don't have to wrap it.

Instead of having an experimental directory, how about making an experimental branch, and then PRing parts into the main branch when ready? That way testing it would be easy, just checkout a branch. Putting things in a separate directory breaks all test scripts, docs, code, etc. I'll set it up if you want me to. I think we really should have two branches at least, a master that mostly takes bug fixes, and a experimental/dev that takes new features and matures them.

(PS: It's also easy to checkout my fork branch into a local branch with a different name, that's how I am working now)

[henryiii]

PS: With the exception of the CLI integration, tests, and docs, everything new is contained in plumbum.color. If I rename the COLOR object to color, I'll need a new directory name. style? colorlib?

The COLOR object is much more powerful than a module could be, for example:

with COLOR:
    COLOR.RED()
    print("This is in red")
    COLOR["Plum4"]()
    print("This is in plum, an extended color")
print("This is fully reset")

And, of course, you can set up new ones with one line, look at HTMLCOLOR, for example.

Also, several color packages seemed to use uppercase names, and colors are "constants" (or, at least, in the first iteration of the package they were str subclasses, so they were), so that's why they are uppercase. That's easy to change.

[henryiii]

The 16 default colors, attributes, and reset are all available in plumbum.color now. For the extended colors, rgb, hex colors, color iteration, etc. still require the COLOR object (which is still called COLOR for now).

Suggested name change:

• COLOR -> colors
• Uppercase color names -> lowercase color names

Then you could do from plumbum.color import colors for all the colors and methods. (or from plumbum import colors for short)

Since I'll have to change all docs, tests, etc., would like feedback before making that change. :)

[henryiii]

I've renamed all colors and attributes to lowercase, and I've even made the module syntax work. So from plumbum.colors import red or even from plumbum.colors.bg import blue works now! (similar to plumbum.cmd trick). All the non-module like features, like with colors: are still supported.

Note that you still have to do import plumbum.colors or from plumbum import colors, simply import plumbum and then using plumbum.colors does not work (intentional currently, adding one line to __init__.py would cause this to work, but this way the colors library doesn't have to load when using plumbum).

[henryiii]

I've added access to colors to the command line, too, using

$ python -m plumbum.colors

This was always available as an emergency terminal recovery (no arguments is still full reset), but selecting all available styles and using colors instead of colorlib is new. tom Have you had time to look at it yet? If you need prebuilt access to the docs, they are at http://henryiiiplumbum.readthedocs.org/en/latest/.

[henryiii]

Closing in favor of new PR from color branch.